united solar ovonics has been laying off people from its relatively new greenville mi plant. that's the location gov jenny made a big deal about as symbolic of the green economy that was going to sustain mi's economy in the future.

can anyone verify rumors that the work was moved to lower paying employees in pennsylvania and was not just due to low overall product demand?

I spent 13 monthes in the two plants in greenville and a month in the plant in auburn hills. They started a $120million expansion in greenville in late 08 for demand. They were backordered through 2010 at that time. They also began construction on a new plant in battle creek. Since then, they economy has tightened up credit to where none of their customers(mostly oversees europe) can get the nesasary financing to fulfill their obligation. In april of 09, construction on battle creek came to a complete stop. At the same time, all forward progress on greenville cam to a stop. Some of the project was 98% complete. Auburn hills consolidated two of their plants to one.
I left Greenville on dec 23 after finishing a 150KW solar array on their roof. At that time, they had just let go about 75 more people and they were cross training everybody to do everything in the plant. BTW, I'm a contractor, not a USO employee.